The new Reminders app in OS X Mountain Lion, borrowed from iOS 5, will also bring "geofence," location-based reminders to the desktop using opt-in location tracking.

Reminders is a new Mac app based upon iOS 5's Reminders app. Previously, Apple incorporated OS X reminders as a feature within iCal, because they are stored as CalDAV tasks. Like iOS 5, Mountain Lion splits Reminders out into its own app and renames iCal to simply Calendar.

The most basic layout of the new desktop Reminders app actually appears similar to a iPhone screen: a simple window presenting a list of tasks. You can swipe between lists of reminder tasks and a page of completed tasks that populates as you check off items as done. The number of reminder lists is indicated by the iTunes-like dot indicators at the bottom of the window.

Click on the triangle icon button at the bottom, and a more complete user interface appears, with an optional monthly calendar and a listing of reminder lists you have created. You can search for items using the search field.

Remind by time &amp; date

When you create a new reminder, an information button appears that lets you configure how the task will be tracked. You can simply create a list of tasks, or you can create alerts that remind you to complete them. If you configure a reminder at a specific time, an alert will be shown in Notification Center.

You can configure how events are presented in the Notifications panel of System Preferences, specifying a brief banner that disappears on its own, or an Alert that is shown until you dismiss it (which is not the default, but probably makes more sense if you actually want to be reminded of an event in a way you won't miss).

Once you configure Alert notifications, Reminders draws a window with Close and Snooze buttons, and updates the time that has elapsed since the reminder was triggered.

Remind by location

New in the DR2 build of OS X Mountain Lion is support for geofencing, which can trigger a reminder event when you enter or leave a specific location. This requires a WiFi network connection to work, as the system obviously has to know where you are at for this to work.

Before Reminders turns on location tracking on your Mac, it requests you to approve this under the Privacy pane of System Preferences. You must supply administrator credentials to unlock the ability to turn enable Location Services, and to allow specific apps to tap into the to feature.

Once approved, you can add "remind me: at a location" to your new entry. As you type an address or contact name, the system offers suggestions of locations in your contacts or completion suggestions for the address you are typing. You can select to be reminded while departing or arriving at the listed location.

Setting a reminder also triggers an approval request to allow the background CalendarAgent task access to your current location.

You can also combine location and time alerts, so you will be given a reminder either when you cross the geofence or at a specific time.

Reminders on the OS X desktop will also tap into iCloud, ostensibly allowing you to set reminders across devices. Because the service is based on CalDAV, it should also work with any third party service that supports Calendar &amp; Reminder features, configured in System Preferences's "Mail Contacts &amp; Calendar" pane.

I love the geo fence feature (been wanting this for years) but I wish that OS X and iOS would allow you to set the fence size. For instance, some things I might want to be reminded in a certain neighborhood or even a city, not just a preset fence size for a specific location.

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I love the geo fence feature (been wanting this for years) but I wish that OS X and iOS would allow you to set the fence size. For instance, some things I might want to be reminded in a certain neighborhood or even a city, not just a preset fence size for a specific location.

That's a good idea -- and it should be trivial to implement... Even a "you're getting warm" warning!

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I use Wunderlist right now because it syncs between my iPhone and laptop. This essentially does the same thing so it might take over. Looks good to me, and I like separating reminders from the calendar. Lots of reminders have no date associated and are just random to do lists.

I love the geo fence feature (been wanting this for years) but I wish that OS X and iOS would allow you to set the fence size. For instance, some things I might want to be reminded in a certain neighborhood or even a city, not just a preset fence size for a specific location.

I'd personally would want the ability to hand enter an address rather than have only addresses in contacts be usable. It's also not completely intuitive with how it works with a date and time

For me the distinction between calendar and reminders / toDos are pretty blurred. I am not really comfortable with having to check two apps multiple times per day.

I agree with you half way on this one. I think it's nice that Apple added the new Reminders app so that it can integrate with iOS. But I actually preferred it better in Lion how Reminders is integrated into Calendar. Apple should have done the same as Contacts in Mail. You can check your contacts within Mail, but if you want to open the Contacts app, just click open Contacts button.

By the way, can anyone tell me if by using geotagging for reminder, does it waste your battery life? I notice when I turn this feature on, the location tracker arrow appears on the top menu bar of the iPhone. So does this mean your phone is always connected?

By the way, can anyone tell me if by using geotagging for reminder, does it waste your battery life? I notice when I turn this feature on, the location tracker arrow appears on the top menu bar of the iPhone. So does this mean your phone is always connected?

There was a write up about it here a while ago and it addressed that question - no discernible effect on battery life. I have also noticed no changes personally as well - if you are asking for anecdotal evidence, subjective as it may be.

There was a write up about it here a while ago and it addressed that question - no discernible effect on battery life. I have also noticed no changes personally as well - if you are asking for anecdotal evidence, subjective as it may be.

I haven't noticed any sever battery drain when using it but the iPhone 4/4S get wonder battery life as is. I do wonder how it works.

One method, which I think is most likely, is to pole your GPS location in a certain interval and if you are within the geofence it sends the reminder. But can it miss your location if you travel through an area too quickly?

Another method, which is more complex, but could be better, is to use cell tower ID and location data so that when your device connects to a new cell tower that cell tower ID and location is checked against your Reminders DB.

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I love how this is implemented and use it all the time. Just like when you take pictures and wait for a moment to see them appear on the iPad's Photos app (see also iCloud commercial), this works the same way. You type the note on the iPhone, it appears on the Mac and vice versa, including status like when one item is considered "Completed" by the user, a few seconds later, iCloud has already synced it.

The same is true for the Notes app in OS X 10.8, which is its own app. I miss Stickies a little, but you can have both if you install 10.8 over 10.7. Stickies and its entire content survives the OS upgrade. At least for now it does. :-)

By the way, I saw a demo yesterday of a use for Siri that was astounding in its simplicity and power ... It is not the specific use that impressed me so much as the lateral thinking involved. The possibilities are endless. Apple should show this to any judge asked to hear the class action law suits against Siri for being useless.

By the way, I saw a demo yesterday of a use for Siri that was astounding in its simplicity and power ... It is not the specific use that impressed me so much as the lateral thinking involved. The possibilities are endless. Apple should show this to any judge asked to hear the class action law suits against Siri for being useless.

Is that Siri or was that sending an email using the voice dictation feature in the iPhone 4S to a company's server that parsed the info and replied via preset rules?

This is only the beginning for Siri. I think it's many years away before it's a great service, as in great in and of itself, not just great in relation to the rest of the competition.

It does plenty of parsing well, but the way you talk to it (as you can see in the video) is slow and steady. That's not how humans talk to each other. It doesn't feel natural. I think we'll see tech that addresses this in future iPhone updates.

I see two major areas of deficency that will hold this tech back. First is the range of terms and means, accents, dialects, languages, etc. This will will be taken care of with continued use of Siri to compile data. This is why it had to be a public beta. Despite what the asshats say this can't be developed in a lab.

Second is getting Siri to build a dynamic profile on your speech patterns, accents, etc. I wouldn't be surprised that we see a Siri setup that has the user read a carefully prepared paragraph in their natural speaking voice to capture all the possible phonemes one might use to create a baseline for Siri understanding it's owner.

With two things I would expect that Siri will one day be able to understand us as well or better than any person we chat up on the street.

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So the geo fencing is cool, however I don't see it being practical with OSX. If I remind myself to stop at the post office when I leave my house on the way to work, how will my Mac know I left the house as there will be no Wi-Fi? Would the fact that the reminders sync via iCloud in turn use the phone or iPad for the GPS on a reminder you set on your Mac? If so then it would be very useful.

On feature I'd like to see added now that we have iMessages on the Mac meaning, the iMessages server knows where all your Apple devices are is the option to have services enable and disable as you enter and leave an geo fence or network area. To wit, have my iMessages not pop up on my iPhone when I'm home and logged into my Mac or iPad.

Another option I'd like to see is to have the geo fence do more than just list reminders. I'd like my phone to go silent and dim the display when I'm in the movie theater without me having to do enable it. Much like the way WiFi will enable itself in certain areas but this would be done based on your geo location not a network priority setting.

Quote:

Originally Posted by wcbaritone10

So the geo fencing is cool, however I don't see it being practical with OSX. If I remind myself to stop at the post office when I leave my house on the way to work, how will my Mac know I left the house as there will be no Wi-Fi? Would the fact that the reminders sync via iCloud in turn use the phone or iPad for the GPS on a reminder you set on your Mac? If so then it would be very useful.

This plus Location Data in OS X makes me think (hope) that an option for cellular connectivity will be coming to Mac notebooks with the next revision.

The cellular component of the iPad is very small and it's considerably larger than it will need to be once the MDM9615 at the 28nm lithography is ready. I'm hoping they allow for all Mac notebooks to add this option with a mini-PCIe slot like they did with the original AirPort cards in Macs. This would require the removable of the bottom casing but they already allow that with the user-replacable RAM.

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Is that Siri or was that sending an email using the voice dictation feature in the iPhone 4S to a company's server that parsed the info and replied via preset rules?

This is only the beginning for Siri. I think it's many years away before it's a great service, as in great in and of itself, not just great in relation to the rest of the competition.

It does plenty of parsing well, but the way you talk to it (as you can see in the video) is slow and steady. That's not how humans talk to each other. It doesn't feel natural. I think we'll see tech that addresses this in future iPhone updates.

I see two major areas of deficency that will hold this tech back. First is the range of terms and means, accents, dialects, languages, etc. This will will be taken care of with continued use of Siri to compile data. This is why it had to be a public beta. Despite what the asshats say this can't be developed in a lab.

Second is getting Siri to build a dynamic profile on your speech patterns, accents, etc. I wouldn't be surprised that we see a Siri setup that has the user read a carefully prepared paragraph in their natural speaking voice to capture all the possible phonemes one might use to create a baseline for Siri understanding it's owner.

With two things I would expect that Siri will one day be able to understand us as well or better than any person we chat up on the street.

It was exactly what you said ... Quite brilliant in its simplicity and avoided any need for anything but voice commands with no improvements required beyond what is there now. That is the whole point as I see it. Yes many more improvements are coming as you describe but right now systems like that could do amazing things by interacting with server side information beyond Yelp and the like. This is a private company leveraging what is already available.

To me this very useful real world application of Siri makes the class action law suits a joke. They remind me of watching someone trying to search with Google when they have no clue how to phrase a question that provides what they want as a result.

By the way, there is no need to talk the way he did, I suspect that was as much part of his being aware they were filming him as anything else. I speak to Siri quite normally without any problem. People who speak slowly to computer systems are exhibiting anthropormorphism. The speed computers can analyze is way beyond it mattering if you speak at half normal speed and if they are learning then speaking oddly is self defeating.

From Apple ][ - to new Mac Pro I've owned them all.Long on AAPL so biased"Google doesn't sell you anything, Google just sells you!"

Oh I love Growl, but with its virtual crippling by App Store restrictions, I suspect its days are numbered and we'll see most developers migrating from Growl notifications to the Notification Center. Shame because Growl has a lot more flexibility and configuration options.

Oh I love Growl, but with its virtual crippling by App Store restrictions, I suspect its days are numbered and we'll see most developers migrating from Growl notifications to the Notification Center. Shame because Growl has a lot more flexibility and configuration options.

There are a lot more options in Growl but I'm not missing it in ML. Notification Center is giving me enough info. The NC list is something that Growl should have had so you can see missed notifications.

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Looking very much forward to 10.8. Since installing 10.7, my 2008 iMac is not what it used to be. Errors, software stalling, deadlock itunes updates... that's all what I fled Windows for!
Installed it a week after it came out officially and still think: I will revert to SL next week end!

Strange that the author set a reminder to get milk when leaving the store, rather than arriving.

He/she is obviously going to get the milk (at another location) once he/she is finished with his/her errand at the said location on the reminder. I haven't been to 2020 Market St. SF but the name of the street does not necessarily equal to activities being done there.

On another note, I find Reminder on iOS is too bare and too boring to work the way I wanted. I use Wunderlist and Weave. Actually, I don't use them much but I prefer them than Reminder. I find GTD appl too obstructive and I don't usually follow, well then I guess my comment here is no use to the conversation either.. I'm off to get my dinner. Hungry stomach makes stupid mind.

One thing I would like to see added to the Reminders app (both in iOS and the upcoming Mountain Lion version) would be the option to share. If I set a reminder that might both apply to my wife and I, be able to send it to her, and she put it in her iPhone/iPad's reminders.

So the geo fencing is cool, however I don't see it being practical with OSX. If I remind myself to stop at the post office when I leave my house on the way to work, how will my Mac know I left the house as there will be no Wi-Fi? Would the fact that the reminders sync via iCloud in turn use the phone or iPad for the GPS on a reminder you set on your Mac? If so then it would be very useful.

Yeah, I was wondering this too. I can see it reminding you after you've arrived somewhere and opened up the laptop, but that's about it. How does it know where I am and how will it notify me when my laptop is closed, asleep and sitting in the back seat of my car? Reminders synched to my iPhone would be very useful though.

So the geo fencing is cool, however I don't see it being practical with OSX. If I remind myself to stop at the post office when I leave my house on the way to work, how will my Mac know I left the house as there will be no Wi-Fi? Would the fact that the reminders sync via iCloud in turn use the phone or iPad for the GPS on a reminder you set on your Mac? If so then it would be very useful.

I think the answer is Yes.

I think that is the best point. If you want to set a reminder while you are working on your laptop at work, you do this, and whatever device you have in handy (i.e. your phone, or your iPad) will remind you about that then.

Does anyone else other then me think the growing clone the Mac is becoming of iOS is not particularly a good thing? iOS people are taking over the company...

I'm not saying integration and common ideas are a bad thing between apple devices, just that some ideas that work great for touch are not particularly useful on a desktop OS.

YEEEESSSS?!? I cant find any usefull uses for this really.... My mac will remind me with a chime in the laptop bag when I drive past the store?!? I'm thinking whats that? I take the laptop out of the bag in the car to see that I have to buy something or do something there?!?

Dudes... I have a phone for that!!!! Please use your programming hours for something more usefull in a real world scenarios!!!!

Faster bootups, new file system, throw the new mac calendar app down the trash, make the mac contact app useable again, file system for ios, make iOS apps useable in real world scenarios. Let's face it iOS can't compete EVER with mac os x if you can't copy files between apps in a usefull way. Please make finder for ios...at least for the pad...

I've had the opposite experience. I had to stop using location reminders because of significant battery drain on my iPhone 4. At first I thought the problem was iOS 5, but as soon as I turned off the location reminders battery life returned to what I was used to.

These new features sound good and all, but what I really need are improved repeat options. Most other apps let you choose the first Sunday of each month, or every x number of days/weeks/months or the 17th of June, September, and October. How about the last Tuesday of June, July, and August repeating every year? Or three weeks after the last occurance is completed? Are any of these changes in the works?

My problem with the Location feature is that on my MBP, and my iPhone 4S, I had an address typed in, with a couple digits of the zip code incorrect; when I tried to correct them (which I could), it still saved under the original, incorrect zip code. I had to delete the notification and start over. How can I 1) delete an incorrect remembered address; or 2) really, really make the change stick?